Today we had a group effort with 2 other members of Brisbane AEVA helping out with the build. Thanks very much to Greg and Jim for your assistance.

Today we worked out where to mount the charger. As it is a fully sealed unit we decided to mount it under the rear of the car beside the spare wheel well. There is a large recess there where the muffler was previously and it means that the charger will not take up any of the luggage room in the car. A couple of steel brackets and it's now mounted solidly under the car.

We also fitted a number of units to an aluminium plate in front of the batteries. The controller, main contactor and precharge resistor were mounted on top of the plate and a sealed aluminium case was mounted under the plate for mounting terminal strips for connecting to the controller and contactor.

The BMS slave boards were mounted in 2 sealed ABS cases one on the rear battery box for 25 cells and one on the front box for 20 cells. The slave boards are 16 cellls per board and the wiring to the cells will be done in 1 sq mm double insulated cable with a 1 amp 3AG waterproof fuse in each wire. The 4 slave boards are then connected by 2 buses (master and slave) back to the BMS master system which will be mounted under the dash.

Battery Boxes Completed

The battery boxes and motor mount are complete. It took 3 solid days welding and grinding then 2 days painting. Another few hours putting them into the car and I am ready to start wiring. The rear box just fits under the rear seat with about 5mm clearance and the batteries can be maintained by removing the seat (4 bolts) from above. The front box holds 20 batteries and is mounted across the engine bay. The controller contactor and fuse is mounted in front of the batteries on an aluminium plate.

I've mounted some sealed ABS cases for the contactors, fuses and BMS slave boards and run the battery cabling from the rear battery box to the engine compartment in "flexible" orange underground conduit. That stuff is not very flexible and it was a painful experience.

Replaced the bonnet and closed it to see if the battery box fitted. There is only about 2 mm clearance in one spot so I will be doing a small amount of panel beating under the bonnet to give a bit more clearance.

Next weekend more wiring.